“Oh, dear no,” said the manager. “This,” pointing to Freyberger’s writing, “is written with a stylograph; this,” pointing to the cheque of Sir Anthony, “is written with an ordinary pen. The writing varies in thickness. It is quite clear.”
“Quite,” said Freyberger.
Freeman flew into a rage. “You mean to suspect me——” he cried.
“I suspect you of nothing,” said Freyberger; “if I did I would take you into custody. You have been simply imposed upon. That cheque of Anthony Gyde’s is genuine. This is what has happened. A person whom you took for Sir Anthony Gyde entered your shop yesterday morning. He had in his pocket a stolen cheque of Sir Anthony’s.
“He asked you to cash a cheque; you consented, and lent him your pen. He took a cheque book from his pocket, and wrote or pretended to write out a cheque for ten pounds. He never gave you that cheque; by a sleight of hand, simple enough, he gave you the genuine cheque, and you cashed it.”
“But why,” said the manager, “did he go to all this trouble? Why did he not simply walk into Mr er—Freeman’s place of business and say, ‘I have a cheque of mine here for ten pounds, will you cash it for me?’”
“I suspect,” said Freyberger, “that he wished to confuse the police. He wished to make us believe that Sir Anthony Gyde was alive and well at ten-twenty a.m. yesterday morning. The fact that he wrote that cheque at ten o’clock yesterday morning would, I confess, have helped to shake a certain theory that I have concerning the case.”
“But surely,” said the manager, “Sir Anthony is alive. It is a dreadful business, but I gather, from the papers, that he is alive and being searched for.”
“That is as may be,” said Freyberger. Then, suddenly, “Hullo! hullo! what’s this?”
He seized the cheque from the table. “It only shows how limited our powers of perception are, and how, in fixing one’s eyes upon one part of a thing, one loses sight of another. To-day is the eighth of the month. What day of the month was yesterday, Mr Freeman?”